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THE NEW YORKER, JUNE 3, 2013
a corporal. Laura told me, "The core of
him was still there, but he wasn't the
same Eddie we've always known grow-
ing up."
Routh foundered without the struc-
ture of life in the Marines. "If some-
one was telling him what to do and
where to go, he was good," Laura said.
"But, when someone didn't have control
of what he did, that's when he veered real
far." At the end of the summer, an old
marine friend helped Routh get a job at
a military contractor headquartered in
New Jersey. He travelled to bases around
the country, repairing weapons. But he
began having panic attacks during flights,
and left after five months. He picked up
odd jobs for a while, mowing lawns and
delivering pizzas. He moved back home.
In July, 2011, a male cousin offered
Routh work in Houston, putting up
metal siding for storage units. Routh
headed south. Summers in Houston are
muggy and, as Raymond said, "You
know them boys are probably drinking
all day and not really drinking enough
water." Routh got heatstroke and fell ill.
Laura drove to Houston to bring her
brother home. On the way back, he told
her that he had a tapeworm. He "kept
obsessing over it," Laura said. Raymond
took him to the Dallas Veterans Affairs
Medical Center. Doctors there failed to
find a tapeworm. Routh stayed in the
hospital a few more days, for further
tests, then checked himself out. (The
V.A. does not comment on the treat-
ment of individual patients.)
Not long after, Raymond took him to
Richland Chambers Lake, in Corsicana,
Texas. "That's where we always went to
relax and get away, had the father-and-
son moments," he said. "I got him there
and he was talking all kinds of goddam
bullshit. I mean, this off-the-wall shit---
how he's Dracula, how he's a werewolf,
and all this shit." Twice, Routh walked
over to his father's car, retrieved a .357
Magnum that Raymond carried with
him outside the house, and threatened to
kill himself. Raymond took the pistol
away both times; after the second in-
stance, he emptied the cylinder and
threw the bullets into the lake. He finally
persuaded Routh to go back to the Dal-
las V.A. Raymond recalled, "The doctor
was writing all the stuff down and I said,
'Eddie, why don't you tell her what you've
been telling me all day? About wanting
to hurt yourself, and how you're Dracula
and all this bullshit?' " This time, Routh
stayed for three weeks. Raymond recalled
that when Routh had been admitted, in
the emergency room, one of the doctors
had given him a diagnosis of P.T.S.D.
Diagnosing P.T.S.D. is an inexact
science. Before the American Psychiatric
Association formally codified the disor-
der, in 1980, Vietnam vets who com-
plained of flashbacks were routinely
classified as paranoid schizophrenics, ac-
cording to David Morris, a former ma-
rine and the author of a forthcoming
book, "The Evil Hours: A Biography of
P.T.S.D." Many symptoms of the disor-
der---insomnia, depression, flashes of
terror---are shared by other forms of
mental illness. Scientists have not found
a biological test that can reliably deter-
mine that a patient has P.T.S.D. rather
than, say, bipolar disorder. Peter Chi-
arelli, a former vice-chief of the Army,
and the C.E.O. of One Mind, a research
organization that focusses on traumatic
brain injury and P.T.S.D., told me,
"When you look at diseases of the brain,
injuries to the brain, we have nowhere
near the certainty in diagnosis or treat-
ment that we do with other maladies of
the body."
During Routh's stay at the Dallas
V.A., Raymond and Jodi failed to notice
much progress, but his doctors eventu-
ally cited sufficient improvement to re-
lease him. They prescribed eight medi-
cations for his son, which, according to
Raymond, were placed in "one of those
gallon baggies." Among the drugs were
lithium, which treats mania; prazosin,
which can help decrease nightmares;
and Zoloft, an antidepressant that is a
common treatment for P.T.S.D. Ray-
mond said that the cocktail of pharma-
ceuticals "made Eddie worse," adding,
"I ain't no doctor. I ain't no rocket scien-
tist or nothing, but I could tell a dif-
ference in him." Routh was still jobless
and continued to drink. He went back
to cutting grass for a real-estate agent,
who told me that Routh was a "good
worker" and "very congenial." In January,
2012, he was pulled over in his pickup
truck and arrested for drunk driving. In
Routh's case, no judge dismissed the
charges; he was found guilty and held on
a fifteen-hundred-dollar bond. Unable
to pay, he served a thirty-day jail sentence.
Not long after he got out, he met a
"It's not you---it's me."
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